The conceptual foundations of well-being in the service ecosystem

Abstract

There is an increasing recognition of the impact of well-being on multiple stakeholders in the society. This stresses the need to further explore this seminal field of science(Carrington, Zwick, & Neville, 2016; Kilbourne, Dorsch, & Thyroff, 2018; Mittelstaedt, Shultz, Kilbourne, & Peterson, 2014).Thus, in order to formulate a ‘common ground’ for pursuing theory and practice, we have to consider the different perspectives of all stakeholders in the service ecosystem; well-being can then be realized as a value in a co-creative manner (Domegan, Collins, Stead, McHugh, & Hughes, 2013; Guo, Arnould, Gruen, & Tang, 2013; Gurrieri, Previte, & Brace-Govan, 2013). Traditional service marketing approaches neglect the common trade-offs between the longterm well-being of consumers and their short-term wants. Services need to transcend in the delivery of the former aspect – creating well-being – and this, more efficiently and effectively than competitors. This will be the competitive advantage of the future, which the literature agrees on (Kotler, Roberto, & Lee, 2002; Lee & Sirgy, 2004; Sirgy & Lee, 2008). Thus, there is a necessity to further understand service strategies that enhance the co-creation and improvement of well-being. Well-being is a very broad church with lots of different flavours and shades(Burroughs & Rindfleisch, 2002; Kilbourne et al., 2018; Nolan & Varey, 2014). As a result, we lack a holistic understanding of the concept and how it may relate to different stakeholders in the service ecosystem. This creates a gap in knowledge that hinders the improvement of the highly important field. Developing a holistic view requires a better understanding of the concept by piecing together the scattered literature. Given the complexity of the topic, we embark on a systematic review of the existing literature in order to formulate the lacking definition of wellbeing in the service ecosystem. Using multiple techniques (solo coding, inter-coder reliability test, Delphi panel test and grounded theory), we analyze and synthesize the multi-disciplinary literature on well-being. We identify and update the existing conceptualizations of the dimensions of well-being, while identifying the various stakeholders interacting within different environment in the service ecosystem. We map these stakeholders and environments against the dimensions of well-being, which – in conjunction – formulate the definition of overall wellbeing that is applicable in a multi-stakeholders in the service ecosystem. We, furthermore, take a considerable step towards fully understanding the mechanisms of well-being co-creation by exploring the interactions of stakeholders and the interrelations among the well-being dimensions. The study offers a broad spectrum of implications for practitioners as well as an agenda for future research directions.